


after dark, fallen star

by emeraldpalace



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Banter, Canon Compliant, Crushes, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Missing Scene, Set during national youth training camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26394145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldpalace/pseuds/emeraldpalace
Summary: “It’s kind of a shame,” he says with an unexpected type of quiet, “that you can’t see the stars here. It’s pretty damn cool otherwise.”“... What did you expect? It’s Tokyo, there’s bound to be light pollution.”“Ugh, Omi-kun, a city boy like you wouldn’t understand— ”“I told you not to call me that.”“And I told you to call me Atsumu, but here we are.”
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 322





	after dark, fallen star

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the lovely, lovely, [alex](https://twitter.com/HIRUWHORE) for giving me the prompt and helping me with the title ily<33
> 
> also i think we generally need more dumb teenagers sakuatsu

“What. Are. You. Doing?”

Miya Atsumu makes an entirely undignified sound as he turns around with all the guilt of a teenager sneaking out at night when he really shouldn’t—which is exactly what he’s doing.

“K-Kiyoomi-kun!” he replies with an incredibly fake hushed laugh. “Funny meeting ya here!”

“What are you doing?” Kiyoomi asks again, in the darkness of the entry hall only illuminated by the streetlights right outside of it. Miya is dressed in his team’s normal track pants, a thick winter jacket on his shoulders.

“Eh, y’know how it is, you get hungry at night, the stuff in the vending machines just isn’t doing it, so I thought I’d go out and find some convenience store.”

“We’re not allowed to go out at night.”

“So? What, ya gonna tattle on me? That’d be kinda lame of you.”

Kiyoomi wasn’t even considering doing that because he has better things to do, thank you very much, but the comment grates on his nerves anyway. Not that he particularly cares about what Miya Atsumu thinks about him. Really.

“What are _you_ doing awake anyways?” Miya continues asking him.

“...Couldn’t sleep,” Kiyoomi replies honestly. He himself is only in his pajamas and his team’s jacket, to protect himself against the cold hallways, but he wasn’t planning on going any further than that.

“Ah, gotcha. Wanna join me?”

Kiyoomi all but scorns at the suggestion. “ _Why_ would I go with you?”

“Alright then, stay a goody-two-shoes,” Miya shrugs easily, aggravatingly. “D’you at least know where the nearest store is?”

“What, you were just going to walk out blindly in the middle of the night not knowing where to go?”

“I mean it’s Tokyo, there’s gotta be somethin’ nearby, right?” Miya almost whines at him, and Kiyoomi suppresses a deep sigh.

“There’s one about seven minutes from here. Turn left at the big intersection, take the second right turn, then the first left—”

“Wait, hold on, hold on—”

“It’s the same way you came from the station. You should’ve passed a large electronics store on your way here, it’s around the corner from it.”

“Ooh, the one with the pink signs?”

“What, there’s no store with pink signs—” A daunting thought suddenly occurs to him.

“Miya, how good is your sense of direction?”

“Well, I mean, it could be better but I’m not gonna get _lost_ or something—” Miya mutters with an awkward scratch behind his head, looking absolutely like someone who would _get lost or something_. Kiyoomi could, of course, just go back to his room and leave him to his fate, let him learn a lesson from his own stupidity, but then he considers the consequences: If Miya does end up getting lost, Kiyoomi would be the last person to have seen him, which would invite people to question him and blame him for not having stopped Miya entirely. Even if Miya ends up finding his way back himself, it might be very late into the night and he might end up being tired and irritated at practice the next morning, which would be bad for the condition of their group as a whole.

With a heavy heart, Kiyoomi sighs. “I guess I can’t leave you alone. Wait here.”

“Hey, I don’t _need_ you to—” Miya calls after him indignantly, as Kiyoomi ignores him and goes back to his room. Miya is still waiting in the hallways when he returns a couple of minutes later with a new set of clothes.

“Arent’cha overdoing it a bit?” Miya asks him with a mocking laugh, and Kiyoomi glares down at him from between his scarf, mask, gloves and knitted hat, covered in three layers from top to bottom.

“Don’t underestimate Tokyo winters,” is all he replies as he moves past Miya to head outside.

“Sure, Mr. City Boy. Lead the way now, I’m _starving_.”

The way to the convenience store is just as short as Kiyoomi predicted it would be, but the way there feels much longer than that. Kiyoomi wouldn’t exactly call it _awkward_ because Miya is plenty good at talking and making random observations to fill the silence between them, but Kiyoomi still isn’t sure what to make of him on the whole.

Here’s what he knows about Miya Atsumu from their limited interactions over the years and this training camp: He’s an incredibly skilled setter. He has a twin brother who’ll probably be a contender as one of the country’s top aces next year. He’s Hyogo born and bred, and takes some pride in that, and he brims with confidence, but not arrogance—not that Kiyoomi is sure he could tell the difference, having been called arrogant many times in his life, but he thinks that much like himself, Miya bases his confidence on the objective reality of his skill more than it being an inherent character flaw. He’s chatty enough with him and everyone else in the training camp, but Kiyoomi feels like it’s not just out of a genuine interest in others like with Motoya, but something that’s part of a bigger plan, or a mechanism he practiced out of necessity.

Or maybe Miya just has the aura of someone who’s inherently untrustworthy. Kiyoomi won’t pretend to be an expert on other people in general. Maybe it's the dyed hair.

Still, even in their surface-level acquaintance, Kiyoomi knows for sure that it’s the first time he’s seen Miya smile as genuinely as when he looks at the pre-packaged spiced tuna onigiri with dreamy eyes.

“Ah, I love Tokyo, these are always sold out so quickly in our stores!”

“Is that why you’re buying in bulk?” Kiyoomi asks at the literal armful Miya has picked up with his bare hands, because of course he didn’t take a basket with him at the entrance.

“Huh? Oh nah, this is just for today and tomorrow, I’ll probably buy more on my way back home.”

Kiyoomi stares at him, blinks twice. “... Suit yourself.”

Miya grins at him and singsongs, “Will do~”

He soon unloads the half-dozen onigiri onto the poor cashier who thankfully hands him a plastic bag in turn. Kiyoomi is fully prepared to turn back to their lodgings immediately, but once they’re back outside in the cold, Miya disrupts his plans yet again.

“Hey, let’s take a walk around the area!”

“What? No, you got your food and now we go back.”

“Oh well, I ain’t gonna keep ya,” Miya shrugs with the bag in hand, but his smile turns several shades too shit-eating to Kiyoomi’s liking.

“But y’see, I’m gonna go and explore Tokyo whether you come with me or not, but if I end up getting lost it’s basically gonna be your fault, right? Like, you already went out to the store with me but you’re just gonna abandon me here, away from the stadium, in the middle of the night when I could get lost, or somethin’ bad could happen to me? That’d be pretty heartless of ya, don’tcha think?”

His faux-innocent tone does nothing to hide the mischievous glimmer in his eyes or his downright obnoxious grin, and Kiyoomi has to reluctantly admit that Miya has a point. Maybe it was already a mistake to accompany him in the first place, but now that Kiyoomi is here with him it would reflect even worse on him if he not only broke the rules himself, but also left Miya all alone to boot.

Besides, Kiyoomi is not someone who does anything half-heartedly, be it volleyball, or making sure an idiot he somewhat knows shows up to practice the next day.

“... Fine,” he eventually replies with a barely-contained groan. “We’ll take a walk around the area, but in twenty minutes we’re going back.”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Twenty-five, and I’m turning back with or without you.”

Miya sighs a dramatic “ _Alright”_ but still merrily skips ahead, munching on one of the onigiri, leaving Kiyoomi to follow him with mild annoyance.

At least Miya isn't as adventurous as Kiyoomi feared he might be, mostly just following the same street they’re on and commenting on the various, mostly closed shops he sees, pestering Kiooymi about what they are. (“If you read the sign, you might have noticed it’s just a hardware store.” “Ooh, it looks so fancy with the lights though.”)

After a while he tells Kiyoomi to show him something exciting already, but Kiyoomi has to tell him a) that he doesn’t know much about this part of Tokyo, and b) that he’s not his personal tour guide anyway, especially not past midnight.

Soon after, the street unexpectedly opens to what seems to be a small park-like area, including a playground that Miya immediately latches onto like he isn’t almost a decade too old for it, running towards the swingset immediately and wasting no time in swinging himself up and down, back and forth as much as he can.

“C’mon Kiyoomi-kun! It’s fun!!” He exclaims as he already swings almost at the height of the pole itself, and with a sigh, Kiyoomi walks up to the seat next to him. The chains dig into his hips since the seat was probably not designed with larger than average teenage athletes in mind, and they also constrict uncomfortably around his shoulders while he keeps his hands firmly in his pockets, but that doesn’t seem to bother Miya in the slightest as he keeps laughing and whooping childishly on every swing, having the time of his life.

“What are you, a child?” Kiyoomi mutters into his mask, but Miya seems to have heard him as he loudly replies, “We’re _both_ still kids, ya know?” He then stops fueling his own motion, but still swings in high arcs past Kiyoomi as he looks down at him. “I’m older than you anyways~”

“How do you know?”

“I asked Motoya-kun for your birthday!”

Kiyoomi frowns. “ _Why_?”

“‘Cause it’s important to know stuff about your rivals? Maybe even future teammates!”

That makes Kiyoomi pause. “What, you mean the U19 team?”

“Oh,” Miya gapes at him for a moment. “Oh shit, I actually haven’t thought of that, we’ll totally both be on the U19 team!”

“This is literally the point of this training camp and you forgot about it?”

“Hey, for me it’s mostly just a place to meet other good players!” He looks back up towards the cloudless sky above them. “Guess I’ll get to toss to ya for real earlier than I thought.”

Kiyoomi can’t help almost sneering when he asks, “Have you been thinking about me that much?”

“I mean, you _are_ the best spiker here, and you don’t even whine around like most people, of course I like tossin’ to ya.”

It’s said so neutrally, casually that it takes Kiyoomi aback a bit, even though Miya wasn’t even looking at him when he said it. It confirms what Kiyoomi’s thought about him for some time now—that despite his outward personality, he is dedicated to volleyball first and foremost, and is equally observant and factual when it comes to judging it. The fact that he talks about Kiyoomi’s skills as a simple fact means that it must be one, or else Miya Atsumu would not so much as give him the light of day. Simple as that.

Kiyoomi can only hum vaguely in reply, because he has no need to thank Miya for stating things he also already knows.

“What did you mean then, if not the U19 team?” is what he asks instead.

“Huh?” Miya’s swaying has mellowed out into a more subdued sway instead, and Kiyoomi finds that he too, has started just moving back and forth by shifting his long legs in the wood chip ground below him.

“I mean, you’re gonna go pro too, right?” Miya asks like it’s an obvious conclusion. “So we might end up on the same team.”

“I’ll go to university first.”

“What!?” The exclamation is accompanied by the skidding of Miya’s shoes to a stop, the other boy looking at him with wide eyes.

“Some of us want to get an actual education, Miya,” Kiyoomi replies with disdain, and then continues, “The collegiate league is not bad either.”

It’s probably the more convincing argument for Miya, because he looks away with mild shame.

“Okay, _yeah_ …” he slowly admits, the words hanging in the air awkwardly and Kiyoomi expects him to continue with a “ _But_ ,” every second now.

Instead, Miya asks him, more subdued, “What’re you gonna study?”

“...Psychology or sports science.”

“Huh. Sounds pretty cool actually.”

They fall back into silence again, though it’s soon interrupted by Miya taking another onigiri from his bag, first offering it to Kiyoomi, who refuses with a shake of his head. Miya shrugs and unpacks it himself and munches on it even as he hums thoughtfully while staring off into the distance.

“What is it?” Kiyoomi asks with a sigh.

“Now I’m thinking who else would be in the U19 team next year,” Miya replies. “I mean, obviously there’s gonna be you, me, Motoya-kun, maybe Tobio-kun. Kourai-kun might have a good chance, I think the coach likes him, and—”

“Why are you speculating about it at all?” Kiyoomi asks him. “It’s not like you’re guaranteed a spot, and you’ll find out who will be part of the team soon enough.”

“Kiyoomi— _Omi-kun,_ ” the nickname grates on Kiyoomi’s nerves immediately, even more than Miya's overly familiar use of everyone's first names, though it might also have something to do with his annoying tone of voice. “D’you really think there’s a chance that I _won’t_ make the team?”

“There’s always a chance,” Kiyoomi replies, mostly just to be contrary. “You can prepare all you want, but you can only influence the outcome so much.”

“Ugh, that’s so _boring_ ,” Miya groans at him, “You ain’t gonna make it anywhere if you don’t dream big, Omi-kun! “

“I don’t need to dream. I do what I can now, and I’ll reap the rewards for it when the time comes.”

“As I said, _boring_.“

“It’s called _realism_ , Miya, you should try it sometime.”

“I _am_ realistic! Like, I know I’m realistically gonna be on the olympic team one day, nothing wrong with saying that!”

“You have no basis for claiming to _know_ that for a fact.”

“Fine, then I guess I really really really _believe_ that I’ll be on the olympic team, ‘cause I’ll be good enough to do it if I keep doing what I wanna do. You’re gonna see when you’re standin’ on the olympic court with me in a few years!”

“.. What, you also already know who’ll be on the olympic team too?”

“I mean I have some pretty good guesses, like again you, me, Tobio-kun if he gets his goody-two-shoes act together, Ushiwaka-kun, Aran-kun, Motoya-kun as the libero, obviously, maybe that Hakaba guy from Kamomedai—”

“ _Why_ do you keep thinking of those hypothetical teams?” Kiyoomi interrupts him. “It’s not like any of them are sure to make it. They could quit, or get into an accident, anything could happen—”

“Way to ruin things, Omi-kun—”

“Don’t call me that—”

“It’s just fun, okay? And the guys I’ve listed are probably gonna continue playing anyways, _and_ I think they’re interesting so I wanna play with them too! But, y’know, whatever, just say you don’t have a creative spirit and go,” Miya shrugs him off and maybe, to some extent, it hurts Kiyoomi, just a little bit. He still doesn’t see the point in speculating about some random future team made up of the small handful of players he knows, not considering who else could come into play that he doesn’t know about yet, but it’s a harmless practice, all in all. Kiyoomi has been called a killjoy many times in his life already. He doesn't particularly want to be one.

“... I do think you can make it. Onto the U19 team.”

He decidedly looks away from Miya and towards the moon hanging above them, though he can see the other turn his head towards him in his periphery. There’s silence for a couple of seconds, before he regrets saying anything at all.

“Awww, Omi-kun, I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me! I’m so touched!”

“Can you drop the nickname already?” Kiyoomi snides at him, trying to distract himself from the fact that he can feel heat rise to his cheeks that has nothing to do with the cold air outside.

“Only if you call me Atsumu,” Miya replies, and Kiyoomi frowns down at him again. Miya only grins mischievously, because Kiyoomi both hates the familiar nickname, and the fact that Atsumu— _Miya_ demands to be addressed so familiarly by everyone around him.

“...I wasn’t being nice,” is what Kiyoomi deflects to instead. “It’s a conclusion based on your objective skill.”

“Oh, I know, but you admit it, and that’s what counts~” Miya singsongs at him. Kiyoomi staunchly looks away, doesn’t deign Miya with a reply, and Miya chuckles at him.

“For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure you’ll make the team as well. “

“... I know.”

“Oh? Who’s the one the one making assumptions now?”

“I said _I know_ because you already said that you think I’ll be on the team,” Kiyoomi replies, saving himself last minute, even if Miya’s assumption was right the first time.

“Sure ya did,” Miya shrugs him off easily, and Kiyomi can hear the faint rustling of plastic as Miya eats another onigiri for himself. They sit like that for another few minutes, and Kiyoomi is suddenly reminded of the fact that they probably should’ve headed back quite a while ago, when Miya interrupts his thoughts yet again.

“It’s kind of a shame,” he says with an unexpected type of quiet, “that you can’t see the stars here. It’s pretty damn cool otherwise.”

Kiyoomi shifts his head around and sees Miya looking up at the sky, idly swinging his feet back and forth. The moonlight makes his dyed blond hair stand out even more in the darkness around them, while also defining his facial features in an attractive way—purely objectively speaking.

“... What did you expect? It’s Tokyo, there’s bound to be light pollution.”

“Ugh, Omi-kun, a city boy like you wouldn’t understand— ”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“And I told you to call me Atsumu, but here we are,” Miya still smiles at him, but his voice has a certain offended edge to it.

“...We don’t know each other that well.”

“So? Doesn’t mean we have to be all formal with each other, either.” Miya replies and then, before Kiyoomi can retort anything himself, suddenly balls his fist into his own hand with a revelation.

“I know!” He exclaims and suddenly turns back to Kiyoomi. “You should come over to Hyogo sometime, so you can see how a real night sky is supposed to look like, ya hear? “

The claim makes Kiyoomi blink down at Miya several times, though the other seems entirely unperturbed as he smiles up at Kiyoomi with disarming sincerity. Again, Kiyoomi feels embarrassment creep up his cheeks, and hopes that not a hint of it is visible in the dim lighting and underneath his mask.

“... I just told you that we don’t know each other that well,” he finally manages to reply.

“Yeah, so that’s why we gotta hang out more, so you finally stop being so stuck up!”

“You do realize that it’s a pretty long way, right? It’s not something I can just do on a whim.”

“Then plan it out! Or we can try to get our coaches to organize a practice match, or—or even a training camp, that’d be cool, right? So we can all hang out more!”

“Why are you so insistent on this anyways?” Kiyomi snaps with more bite than he intended to, which makes Miya recoil just a bit, and then look away with the slightest hint of bashfulness.

“I dunno, I just thought it’d be neat. Like I said, I always wanna find out stuff about the players I’m interested in, alright?”

The word choice makes Kiyoomi almost choke, and then he immediately, vehemently tells himself that Miya obviously didn't mean it like _that_. Of course he didn’t, it would be absurd for anyone, let alone Miya Atsumu to have any kind of _interest_ in him beyond the scope of volleyball, but for some reason the words stick with him and make something in his chest squirm uncomfortably.

It doesn’t help that Atsumu is still grin smiling up at him with such genuine excitement at the prospect of Kiyoomi visiting him, and when Kiyoomi spends a second to think about it, it’s somehow even _worse_ that he’s doing it out of a selfish, dedicated kind of interest in Kiyoomi as a spiker, set only on playing with him because he knows that that’s the best way for himself to improve in volleyball too.

And as soon as that thought hits him, as soon as he connects the the words _Miya Atsumu_ and _dedication_ in his mind, the ball drops on him and he feels the same kind of respect, the same kind of admiration well up in him as it did twice before in his life—once for Wakatoshi, and once for Iizuna, when they’ve proven their diligence in the deliberateness of their actions, which are Kiyoomi’s most admired qualities in other people.

Motoya teased him both times, for ‘ _falling in love at first sight_ ’, even if his feelings were simple childhood crushes, but this—this feels both familiar and yet so different all the same. Atsumu hasn’t done or proven anything per se, but Kiyoomi knows him to some extent—has already concluded that Atsumu has his own kind of diligence, his own kind of uncompromising way of working towards his goals, and even his simple declaration is enough to make Kiyoomi believe that he means every word of it—It’s sickening, how much he can feel himself cave within moments, not being able to stop it as much as he doesn’t _want_ to feel that way about Atsumu, of all people.

“So, what do you say?” Miya asks him, still with that disgustingly genuine smile, which is the only thing shaking Kiyoomi out of his unwanted thoughts.

“I guess… I can bring up the idea with our coach. Though usually it’s other schools that visit us, since we have the better facilities.”

“Hey, ours aren’t too bad either! And you can tell them that we have good country air or somethin’ like that, yeah? All that pollution around here is probably bad for you,” he jokes easily, and despite himself, Kiyoomi can feel himself returning a smile, still not knowing if Miya can even tell—not sure if he wants him to, at this point.

“Alright. I’ll try.”

“I expect you to try your best, ya hear? Use bribery and blackmail if you have to,” Miya tells him with dramatic seriousness and Kiyoomi feels himself huff out a low laugh.

“I always try my best.”

“Alright, then I’m counting on ya,” Miya replies with a bright grin, and reaches out his hand in the gap between the swings. Kiyoomi takes out his hand out of his pocket for the first time and bumps their fists together.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading so far!! if you liked it, please consider giving it an RT on [twitter](https://twitter.com/emeraIdpalace/status/1304868889273212928?s=20) as well<3


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